Fol Chen: Part I: John Shade…

By: Dennis Cook

This pokes a crazy straw into the deep ice of the modern subconscious and slurps hard until a beautiful brain-freeze ensues. Fol Chen has a tasty way about them with a minty tang reminiscent of Hot Chip, Subtle and other quality contemporary layer lifters and psyche pokers. There’s probably some sort of overarching storyline given the multi-syllabic album title but you’ll hardly care as you bop to the clicks and pops of “No Wedding Cake,” only to discover a delicate, beguiling sonic getaway like “Cable TV” or a nicely curved patch like “You and Your Sister in Jericho,” which shines like moonlight after final call puts you back on the sidewalk. Talking about Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made (arriving February 17 on Asthmatic Kitty Records) in anything less than poetic, perhaps even contradictory, descriptors is a waste of time. So hardtack-slippery, so jagged-smooth, so bouncing-still is what Fol Chen has wrought that pinning it down in “reviewer-speak” seems a disservice. It’s catchy as fuck in places and a touch scary in others but it’s never a dull ride. The band describes themselves, saying, “You know that mysterious black object that the creepy family is staring at on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Presence album? Fol Chen sound like that. But we don’t sound like Led Zeppelin (we actually do a little.). Instead, we sound like Prince with Amon Duul II and a children’s religious revival.” It’s a fair assessment and far less of a mess than it might seem in abstraction. They are a fine example of the post-iPod world, stripped free of the borders of genre and time, open to whatever inspiration flies into their ear canal and out their pretty mouth.

Meet some freaky sea creatures!

High School shop class was never like this…except when they left us alone with the spray paint.

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